


stool set

by owlinaminor



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: It works, most of the time.  He takes the spotlight on stage and the warmth it leaves in its wake.  He wears Shy Baldwin like a chiffon robe, so close to his skin it’s almost imperceptible.
Relationships: Shy Baldwin/Reggie (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	stool set

**Author's Note:**

> watched maisel season three this past week, and I had to write a little something for the best character on the show. shout-out to [henri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielgoodman) for enabling me.

He picks the name Shy when he’s fourteen.

Reads it, in the back of a dictionary hunched over a desk in the school library, wood creaking beneath his weight and sunlight, half-shrouded by clouds, peering in through the windows.

Shy. Bashful, reserved. Never the center of attention. It doesn’t fit, or he doesn’t want it to. It fits like a cape, like the black space just before the spotlight comes on, hungry for warmth to fill it. Goodnight, Dwayne. Good morning, Shy. Time to fill the room.

Reggie knows the name on the birth certificate, though. Reggie knows everything.

He picks a new name for each club.

It’s easy, like reading fantasy. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote science fiction to imagine a world that fit him, and Shy imagines worlds each time he pushes past a bouncer, each time he slips in and out of the shadows. He always wears dark clothes, like a second skin.

He is James, the first night he kisses a boy. Harlem, not the Apollo’s Harlem but out by the piers, lights of New Jersey sparkling in the distance. The boy laughs at him when his hands shake, presses him up against the railing and leans in like the wind, whipping through and lifting him up.

He is Alexander, the first night he goes to his knees in a club bathroom. Miami, Overtown, the lounge behind the hotel, it’s hot as a swamp and twice as muggy, the floor is slippery beneath him and he’ll have to toss the trousers tomorrow but he doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think. He opens his mouth wide and gives from the depths of his lungs.

He is Franklin, the first night he takes a man home. Vegas, the cards all spinning downstairs, laughter and shouts echoing but Shy is quiet, Shy is soft-heeled loafers and a silk jacket slung over his shoulder, whispering, _don’t worry, don’t worry, they won’t notice._ Shy is embarrassed about the hotel room and the unmade bed just long enough for him to be pushed down into it.

He is Shy, two years in, when his face is too famous for costumes. He learns to hide in plain sight, instead.

The first time they kiss, Reggie makes Shy wait for it.

Reggie is smooth, like a knight in brand-new armor, still hot from the furnace. He reshapes the armor each time Shy moves up—from filling hundred-seat theaters to filling thousands, from record deals to gold standards to platinum, from Washington Heights to the Apollo. Reggie is molten metal, shining in this quiet way like he wants nobody to see, but Shy wants to see, Shy wants to run his hands across Reggie’s chest, open his suit jacket and his skin.

“You’ll be famous,” Reggie said when they were kids laying out on the fire escape, and Reggie made it happen. Reggie makes things: music, poetry, armor. He makes Shy, too, spreads his fingers across Shy’s temple and diagnoses him. Stupid genius. Impossible talent. Too-close star.

The first time they kiss, Reggie takes a step back first. Tilts his head down, lifts a finger to Shy’s chin and holds him in the space after a spotlight, frozen, still waiting for the applause.

“Do you want this?” Reggie asks.

Shy nods.

“Are you sure?”

Shy nods again.

And Reggie leans in.

Maisel asks him, “Do you like being famous?”

“I didn't like not being famous,” he tells her, “so this is better.”

He likes the food, the music, the clothes. Everything fixed just for him: the steak roasted medium-rare, the endless suits tailored with one fitting a year, the coffee kept hot and the champagne kept cold. And when he wants the world to bend to him a little further, he yells—fires the band, the chefs, the accountants, and watches them all crawl back.

Reggie keeps him off the boats, but he has enough momentum to sail on land. He picks up girls for the pictures and boys for the back rooms. The best way to test a hotel bed, after all, is to be pressed down against it. Shy likes to be pressed down, likes feeling another body’s weight on his, likes the inverse of a spotlight and its aftermath. Likes blocking out the rest of the world. Shy gets pressed down, gets lips on his neck, gets a cock in his mouth, takes it all hungrily like he’s singing for his supper.

It works, most of the time. He takes the spotlight on stage and the warmth it leaves in its wake. He wears Shy Baldwin like a chiffon robe, so close to his skin it’s almost imperceptible.

And when it doesn’t work, he does a stool set. Sits, just forward enough on the seat to be uncomfortable, and sings from beneath the armor. Something slow, something sweet. Something for all the boys still in Harlem and all the stars they wish on. Something for Reggie, standing in the wings and watching, his stone face going soft.

He always laughs, when Maisel introduces him.

“The one and only Shy Baldwin.” As though there aren’t a hundred other kids in Harlem just like him, kids with dark skin, smooth faces, deep voices like butter melting in the pan. Wide eyes, always open, like if they watch the world long enough, they can step up and change something. He sees these kids, staring back at him every time he plays the Apollo. When he plays other theaters, too. White-only theaters in white-only hotels, he sees them in the spaces between the tables, filling the shadows. Watching, and promising they won’t be like him.

_Judy Garland shoes,_ Maisel says. Closet full of chiffons. She can paint a vivid picture, he’ll give her that. She practically rips off the golden robe from his dressing room, tears it into a hundred pieces, and tosses it out to the audience like she owns the place and everyone in it.

Shy sits in his dressing room, after, and looks at himself in the mirror. Reggie is out there somewhere, bullying all the reporters into forgetting Maisel’s set. Shy can practically hear it in his head. _You write about the food, and the band, and the screaming girls. That’s our boy up there, mine and yours, and I know you don’t want your readers getting the wrong idea._

Our boy up there. Yeah. These dark eyes in the mirror, these shadows carefully covered up beneath. This voice, coming up raspy after the set. None of it is his, not really. Just his to use until he grows too gray to carry them, or his until he dies of an overdose. Whichever comes first.

“They cried, when I told them,” Reggie says the next night, sitting down next to Shy on the plane. “Begged me not to do it.”

Shy can picture it—can hear Maisel’s voice, back on the boat, telling him to see a doctor. She’s good at the makeup, he’ll give her that. As though she’s ever needed to hide from anything in her life.

“Good,” Shy says. He leans his head on Reggie’s shoulder and listens as the plane’s engine starts.

Reggie sings with him, maybe once every three months.

It’s funny: all Shy has to do is ask nicely. Bat his eyelashes, maybe, throw an arm around Reggie’s shoulders, pretend to be less steady on his feet than he really is. But if he asked more often, he doesn’t know that it would work—that Reggie would follow his lead, or if he would deem it too dangerous. _Think of the papers, think of the band, think of the record labels, what will they say._

Shy doesn’t know what they’ll say. That’s Reggie’s job. So he keeps his asking to when he needs it, every three months, maybe every four, maybe up to six. Once or twice a tour, when he drinks too much whiskey and the world goes golden, and he forgets Shy Baldwin, or he pretends to. When he is just a boy, in a body, who wants another body in the space next to is.

Reggie sings, and Shy sings harmony. They melt like butter in the pan, like hot metal in the desert sun, like the lights of New Jersey, shining from across the Harlem piers, so golden, like you could reach out and touch them if you only asked.

Shy asks nicely, when he really needs something. He sings with Reggie, and he goes back to Reggie’s hotel room, and he’s still smiling when the sun comes up.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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